‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’: Sunshine after the storm

Disclaimer: This review may contain some spoilers for ‘Ant-man and the Wasp’

It’s been two months since the premiere of “Avengers: Infinity War,’ and some people are still freaking out about what happened in the movie. Now, Marvel Studios gave us a much more light-hearted film: “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” directed by Peyton Reed. This movie directly follows both the first Ant-Man movie and “Captain America: Civil War,” taking place two years after the events of the latter, and during the events of “Avengers: Infinity War.” But after the successes of both of those movies, the question remains: was it good?

The cast from the previous movie returns and are as good as they were in the previous Ant-Man movie. A few new people are quite prevalent though such as the main villain, Ghost or Ava, played by Hannah John-Kamen and she was wonderful.

While a completely different character from her comic book counterpart, the main difference being that Ghost in comics is a man, she gave the right kind of performance that Ghost would have in comics. She had just the right desperate and almost cold blooded attitude throughout the movie but you still could feel sympathetic towards her. She had become unstable and was fading in and out of time and she was trying to find a cure for herself. It was a case of she had the right motives, but bad methodology in which Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) have to stop. If I had any complaint about the movie, it would be that she didn’t change much or have much of an arch.

Laurence Fishburne plays Bill Foster, an ex-colleague of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). His character helps out Ghost in her quest to stabilize her. Randall Park also shows up in the movie occasionally as Jimmy Woo, the FBI agent who keeps track of Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man. He is hilarious throughout and definitely earned a good spot in the movie. Lastly, Michelle Pfeiffer plays Janet Van Dyne, the original Wasp and Hank Pym’s wife who was stuck in the quantum realm. While she’s only in the movie for the end, she’s very good.

There are two main plot lines throughout “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” The first comes from Hank and Hope, aka the Wasp, where they believe that Hope’s mother and Hank’s wife, Janet, could still be alive after 30 years of being trapped in the quantum realm. A lot of the movie is spent trying to find the way to get her out while avoiding the FBI since Ant-Man’s fight alongside Captain America in “Captain America: Civil War” made them associates of a major criminal.

The second plot line came from Ghost and revolves around trying to stabilize and cure herself. They way these two connect is through Van Dyne. She theorized that since Van Dyne had been in the quantum realm for so long, she had absorbed a lot of quantum energy, which Ava could use to stabilize herself. The problem is that it could kill Van Dyne, however Ava doesn’t care about that. She just wants to be cured. It’s Ant-man’s and Wasp’s job to stop her from possibly killing Janet. The stories were great and kept me interested the entire movie.

While the original movie was much like a heist comedy movie, the second is purely action comedy. And boy is this movie funny. I’d say funnier than the original. Rudd is as witty as ever and constantly cracking jokes at just the right time. Michael Peña was also hilarious. He was hilarious in the first movie and he’s hilarious here. Park also has a really funny character. But when is Randall Park ever not funny? The action in the movie is also well placed. It’s well choreographed and enjoyable to watch. The special effects are also really well done. Then again it is a Marvel movie and rarely are they ever bad.

One of the main issues I had with the movie was the lack of change and character arch with Ghost. She seemed to want this one thing the entire movie and despite seeming like she could change and realize that there might be another way to cure herself, she always seemed to be stubborn on this one way of doing it and that bothered me. Another problem I had with the movie was the use of the mob and Walton Goggins’ character, Sonny Burch. Every time he was on screen it really didn’t feel like he needed to be there. There was one section toward the beginning of the movie which made sense, but after that it was kinda pointless. Other than that though, I enjoyed the movie.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” is a much more light hearted movie than “Infinity War” and it is a good reminder of what Marvel Studios is great at: making superheroes funny and I’m glad I went to go see it. I’d give this movie a solid B+. However, if you haven’t seen “Civil War,” the first Ant-Man movie or “Infinity War,” see those first. Basically, just watch all of the Marvel Studios movies. They’re all pretty good.